


osmosis, or: five things Terry never told Max and one thing he did (she already knew)

by orphan_account



Category: Batman Beyond, DCAU - Fandom
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Future Fic, Mostly Gen, Women Being Awesome, au-ish, batfamily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘If you want to thank me, buy me dinner before you drop me off. The upholstery’s starting to look good.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	osmosis, or: five things Terry never told Max and one thing he did (she already knew)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piper/gifts).



5 _You scared me again. Stop doing that._

Freakshows in snake suits, psychotic dinosaur megalomaniacs, all around it's been a weird week and it's not getting any less weird.

It's weird seeing Bruce this angry. Bruce doesn't get angry; he gets the job done. And maybe he gets even. He bites his words off like he wants to tear into them, or maybe into Terry, but he doesn't raise his voice. And he doesn't this time, either, but-

If sound was light, this would be the absence of it; this sound like a shout heard through vacuum, sucked in and then spat straight out into echo. It's everything Batman used to be and won't ever be again and the cave sounds weird, afterward, the bats' shrieks magnifying echoes Terry thinks belong more in his head than anywhere else. It only gets worse when Bruce calls the commissioner, snapping at her like he can bite her words off along with his own.

Terry goes back upstairs and waits. Someone has to, and waiting out Bruce's weirdly obvious anger will always come in second to leaning against the wall in Max’s borrowed room and waiting while the commissioner checks her over.

Her hands are gentle on her jaw and underneath it, testing swollen lymph nodes, briefly pulling her lids back and her mouth open, but Terry’s not sure gentle matters. She’s still out of it. Her skin is wrong, sweaty greenish-grey over her cheeks and up along her hairline; her mouth is grey and she’s white around her edges and Terry wishes she’d say something already, even if it’s as sarcastic as he knows it’s going to be.

‘Some deep bruising,’ the commissioner tells Bruce, who just walked in. ‘No tracheal damage. You can blame whatever she inhaled. There's no way to tell for certain what it was without bloodwork, but I'm not telling you anything you don't know.'

'It's been taken care of.'

'How did I know you were going to say that? I’d suggest a hospital for both of them if I thought that would do any good.’ She sounds like she believes that will happen when Freeze gets tired of the heat and ices hell over, but the hospital sounds like an excellent idea to Terry, at least for Max.

Bruce says, ‘We’ll watch her.’

‘If you don’t fall asleep,’ the commissioner says almost but not quite under her breath.

Bruce looks at her and says, ‘Have you found the bodies?’

She slides her hands into her pockets and shrugs. ‘The crash site is still too hot to go in.’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

She says, ‘You’ll take it however you want whatever I say,’ and leaves.

‘You’re staying,’ Bruce tells Terry. ‘You have cracked ribs and I have work to do.’

‘Playing with Max’s blood, yeah, I know,’ says Terry. ‘Not creepy at all,’ he mutters.

They pass each other in the middle of the room. Bruce’s shoulder brushes against his, jarring his arm, and he hisses, grabbing automatically for his ribs.

'How's the breathing working for you?' Bruce says. Terry glares at him. 'Sit down,' Bruce says, 'before you fall down.' His elbow knocks into Terry's arm as he goes, and Terry traps the sound he can't stop between his teeth. He’s not stupid enough to think Bruce's movement was accidental. He limps over to the chair closest to the bed and lowers himself slowly into it, and he breathes.

 

He doesn’t know he’s asleep until he’s coughing himself awake, choking on air he can't get into his lungs. He has the weirdest feeling that if he moves at all, his guts will end up in his lap, and every time he tries to turn his head the muscles in the back of his neck seize up. He can feel Max's hand on his wrist, though, as real as the crushing constriction in his chest, and when he can breathe and move well enough to check, he can see her eyes are open, clear and focused. His own physical problems seem secondary to that.

‘You sound like crap,’ she croaks, and he hasn’t been this happy to hear anyone’s voice since he got Dana back from that freak in the sewers.

He coughs again. ‘I feel like crap. Your boyfriend the dinosaur and his friends hit hard,’ he says, and her skin looks like it usually looks. She's glaring at him, so damn normal it's perfect.

‘Not my anything, McGinnis,’ she says, still hoarse, but she sounds better than she did even a few seconds ago. She sounds pissed. ‘He _abducted_ me, it’s not like I asked to get dragged into his delusional saurian fantasy world.’

‘You didn’t,’ Bruce says. ‘It still happened.’ He’s standing in the doorway out of the light. His cane thumps against the carpet and Ace nudges in around him and he moves, stretching the shadows until they let go of him and crouch at his feet, dark fingers circling the heels of his shoes.

He says, ‘This has gone on long enough,’ and Terry’s stomach tries to vault into his throat and escape through his mouth. Max’s fingers pinch his skin and her breath hiccups once and Bruce says, ‘You’re going to train. Both of you.’ He looks at Terry and Terry’s stomach slinks back down his throat into his abdomen, probably because if it stays in his abdomen Bruce can’t stare at it.

‘This wasn’t my fault,’ Max says.

Bruce says, ‘It was mine. I’m correcting my error.’

Ace nudges Terry’s hand with his nose and Terry scratches the top of his head and behind his ears, scratches and rubs and looks sideways at Max. She does this whole body shudder-twitch-shrug thing and he says, ‘Fine.’ He says, ‘You want us to train? We’ll train. But I'm not getting someone else killed. Kairi--’

'I know,' Bruce cuts him off with a look as much as his words.

'Then what,' Terry shoots back, frustrated. 'I'm not putting a physical person in danger because you think the sims aren't good enough.

Bruce almost looks amused. ‘Superman can take care of himself.’

Terry says, ‘You’re not serious.’

‘He’s always serious,’ says Max.

Terry says, ‘I thought you didn’t want me working with the League.’

‘Not that League. The first one.’

Fluent in Bruce, Terry mentally replaces 'first' with 'real'.

‘Are they even still alive?’ Max asks.

Terry tries not to laugh--it hurts too much, and Max looks like she's going to pass out again. ‘You look worse than I feel,’ he tells her. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘You'll stay here tonight,’ Bruce says. He turns, cane thumping back toward the door, Ace padding along behind. ‘I’ll contact your parents and let them know where you are.’

‘Don’t have to,’ she says around a yawn. ‘Nobody’s home.’ 

He pauses, looking back at her. ‘Good night, Maxine.’

‘’Night.’ She’s already burrowing down into the covers when the door clicks shut after Bruce. Terry watches her pull the sheets up until she’s covered to her nose.

‘You’ll suffocate.’

‘Don’t care,’ she slurs, almost gone. ‘The shadows here are seriously wrong. If I leave something sticking out they’ll bite it off. Hey,’ she blinks at him from inside her blanket fort. ‘First time he’s called me that to my face.’

‘Be afraid.’

‘Mm-hmn.’

Her breathing evens out quickly. He slumps down as far as his ribs will let him and watches the edge of the sheet move in and out with the rhythm of her breath.

 

5+

Wonder Woman juggles cars for fun. J’onn knows what they’re going to do before they think about doing it, Superman’s idea of a light workout is a quick breast stroke around the surface of the sun, and Warhawk’s parents are Armageddon all by themselves. Bruce aside, though, out of the first League’s roster of terrifying and sometimes alien badasses, it’s Flash who works them the hardest.

‘You’re human,’ he tells them. ‘You can’t afford to slack. You’re not invulnerable, and yeah, I know Bruce’s tech is awesome, but you know what? He used to do what you do now without the awesome tech. His brain is his superpower.’ He pauses. ‘That and being scary in a cape in broad daylight.’

Bruce says, ‘Flash.’

Flash grins. ‘I’m just letting them catch their breath. I mean it’s not like they can catch me.’

‘Flash.’

‘Yeah, Bats?’

‘Shut up.’

‘I can do that.’

It’s another hour, give or take, before Terry is almost sure he’s left the cave. (It’s Flash, so who knows?) They lie still on their backs, hoping, watching and listening to the bats twittering in the cave’s high arch. They lie on their backs and not their sides or their fronts because anything else would hurt too much.

‘I thought he was supposed to be the nice one,’ Max groans. She tips her head back to glare at Bruce. ‘What’d you do, give him lessons?’

Someone who is not Bruce or Max, and definitely isn’t Terry, laughs.

Terry has a brief stare off with his neck muscles. They blink first, whining at him when he lifts his head, and in front of the Case, Dick Grayson is standing next to a woman whose smirk is almost as bad as Bruce’s non-expressions. Terry thinks she looks familiar, but he can’t place her. He hopes her face wasn’t on a mug shot attached to a rap sheet; Bruce knows some very unschway people.

Dick says, ‘Don’t mind us, we’re just here to point and laugh.’

‘That too,’ the woman says. ‘Although they’re not as bad as I expected.’ She meets Bruce’s stare head on. ‘You owe me one, Wayne.’

‘Um,’ Max says, rolling gingerly up into a sitting position, ‘do I want to know what he owes you for? Because I have this feeling it’s for prospectively kicking my ass.’

Dick grins at Max. ‘We’re the graduate program,’ he tells her. ‘I’m Dick,’ Max’s eyes widen as he jerks his thumb at the woman, ‘and that’s Helena.’ The grin grows edges worthy of Bruce after his chiropractor’s worked him over. ‘For the next six months we’re going to make you wish you were dead on a daily basis. If you want out, now’s the time to say so.’

He can _feel_ Bruce staring at Dick. Dick is blatantly ignoring Bruce. Max groans again and drops her forehead down to rest on the mat. ‘Why not? After Flash, how bad can you be?’

‘Ha,’ says Dick. ‘Good one.’

Helena’s smirk, Terry thinks, could stop a gang of Jokerz all by itself. Max is looking up at her, frowning. ‘I’ve seen you before,’ she says, narrowing her eyes. ‘Not the stills.’

‘Try the old JLU archives,’ Dick suggests.

Bruce says, ‘Dick.’

Helena bares her teeth at them. ‘I’m late or I’d stick around and watch the fireworks,’ she says, glancing at her watch then back down at Terry and Max. ‘Six am, Saturday. If you’re not up, I will haul your butts down here myself.’ She jogs toward the stairs, scary-hot older librarian in thick black frames and purple and white running shoes.

Terry’s pretty sure those are darts of some kind pinning her hair up on top of her head.

‘What’s your hurry,’ Dick calls after her. ‘School already let out for the day.’

‘You know Vic,’ her voice comes back. ‘If I’m not where I say I’m going to be he gets kind of weird.’

‘Kind of,’ Bruce repeats.

‘Do you want your database hacked again? Also, that’s a nice glass house you’re living in and my throwing arm is still damn good.’ The clock clicks closed behind her.

‘It is,’ Dick confirms thoughtfully. ‘Probably better than mine.’

‘I like her,’ says Max, ‘except she’d better keep that Vic guy away from my database. Not that he’d get through my firewalls.’

Dick makes a choking noise. Terry remembers where he saw Helena’s smile. Smirk. Expression not meant to be contained by an actual human face. He says, ‘I think now would be a good time to opt out.’

Bruce says, ‘You can try.’

 

4 _You’re right, dark purple works as well as black. If you tell Bruce I said that, I’ll tell him you said you’d clean up after Ace for the rest of the year._

‘I’m starving,’ she says. ‘That’s one thing they never tell you about the hero gig. Chasing bad guys on a full stomach is not a good idea.’

He slams his locker closed and picks up his pack. ‘Just keep throwing up on them and not me.’ She doesn’t answer and when he turns to look, she’s holding her suit top up, running her fingers over one arm. ‘Okay?’

She frowns briefly at him. ‘Sure. I thought—’ She shakes her head and bundles the suit up, shoving it into her locker and reaching for her own pack. ‘Let’s go,’ she says and he follows her out of the bay and past the Case. ‘Do we have a ride back?’

He holds up a key card.

‘The Porsche?’ she says hopefully.

‘BMW.’

‘Someday,’ she says, trailing him around the bat plane, ‘I’ll get around to getting my license and then he’ll let _me_ drive it.’ Then, ‘Remind me to download the suit specs to my pad.’

She has this non sequitur thing she does. If he waits, she’ll tell him without his having to ask.

‘I need to figure out how to repair the body without interfering with the operating system if it gets damaged while I’m stuck somewhere wet.’

He turns on the garage lights then pulls her out of the way of the limo before she can walk into it. 'Why wet?'

‘Hypothermia is bad,’ she informs him.

‘You won’t have time to get hypothermic,’ he says. ‘Someone will try to kill you way before that.’

‘Says the twip who spent twenty-four hours trapped in collapsing subway tunnels with a side of flooding.’

‘You may have a point.’ He skirts two vintage Indians and a corvette and the black BMW looks like it was washed and polished this morning. All of Bruce’s cars are glossy black. Except for the Porsche. It’s shiny silver, which is probably why Max wants to drive it. Surrounded by the total eclipse, it's too obvious to ignore.

‘Speaking of food,’ she says as she wanders around to the other side of the car.

He says, ‘We were?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Pay attention, McGinnis, there will be a test later.’

‘So… what?’

‘Weren’t you supposed to be on a date?’

He pauses with his hand on the door handle. ‘She’s going to kill me.’

Max is laughing. ‘Don’t spizz, I got you covered. I told her you’d meet her there, that we were studying here and you’d probably be late.’ She opens her door and slides in, leaning across to look at him. ‘Are we going?’

He opens the door. ‘We’re going.’

Halfway back to town he says, ‘Thanks.’

She says, ‘If you want to thank me, buy me dinner before you drop me off. The upholstery’s starting to look good.’

He says, ‘There’s always a catch.’

 

3 _You’re better than I am at a lot of this. I’m not sure how to feel about that._

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Matt says. ‘I have to get out by myself.’

He’s on the ground, cuffed to the evidence table farthest from Bruce’s console. Terry looks from him to Bruce, seated at the console, ignoring everything but his screen. As usual.

‘In two seconds you're going to tell me this is a test run of Spellbinder’s tech,’ Terry says. ‘Until then all I have to do is pretend it’s not happening.’ Somewhere behind him, Max is laughing her ass off.

‘It’s not, unfortunately. He followed you,’ Bruce’s voice comes from the depths of his chair. ‘Be careful when you leave. The perimeter defenses are at maximum.’

Terry looks back down at Matt, who smirks at him. ‘What’re you gonna do?’ the twip says. ‘Tell Mom?’ Terry opens his mouth. And closes it. ‘I didn’t think so,’ Matt says, then he’s not looking at Terry anymore; he’s frowning through him. The cuffs creak.

Max leans her forehead against his back, shaking and making weird noises. ‘When I don’t want to kill you so much,’ he tells Matt, ‘we’re going to talk about this. A lot.’

Matt says, ‘Whatever,’ and drops the cuffs on the ground. Bruce turns his chair around and watches him stand. ‘Was that supposed to be hard?’ he says scornfully.

Bruce steeples his hands.

Terry says, ‘I’m out of here.’

 

Two days later, Dick laughs at him over the comm. ‘Robins happen,’ he says. ‘Just ask Bruce.’

‘Thanks,’ Terry tells him. ‘That’s reassuring.’

‘Look at it this way,’ Max says, ‘you’ll have someone in house to train with after I’m gone.’

Terry says, ‘What?’ and the T in front of him almost lands a punch.

‘Your timing is almost as bad as mine,’ Dick says. ‘You two kids have fun with that.’ The line clicks. Terry drops his opponent and turns in time to watch her cuff hers. He tries to think of something to say but he’s fit too tight inside the suit, his skin stretched to breaking. The suit constricts him, squeezing his jaw into immobility.

Max pushes to her feet and turns to face him. In this light, aside from the cross, her suit is the same color as his. The first Huntress didn’t wear a full domino, but her mask is built to do what his cowl does. He can’t see her eyes.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want—’

‘It’s okay,’ he cuts her off. ‘Later.’ He picks up his perp and hits his jets.

 

Bruce’s furniture is all old. A lot of it looks like it should be behind glass in a museum instead of gathering dust in some old weird guy’s house, and using it feels wrong. The only room that’s halfway normal is Dick’s old room, which is why Terry co-opted it after one night of breathing in mahogany dust and decaying linen and someone else's recycled bad dreams. It's where he stays when he stays over, and by now it's kind of his. Max doesn’t have that option, though, and it’s… weird is the only word for the bend of her back over an antique dressing table while she strips the blue from her hair. He can see the curve of her spine through her t-shirt and the way her stained fingers leave blue streaks all over the white sheet spread over aged cherry wood.

‘I can’t pass this up,’ she says. ‘Helena got me in, and even if she hadn’t,’ she meets his eyes in the mirror, still scrubbing, ‘it’s what I want,’ she says.

It’s the same room she stayed in the first time. His chair is the same one he slept in then, waiting for her to wake up.

‘Who’s on the roster?’ he asks.

‘Right now?’ Her eyes lose some of their focus when she thinks. It’s a habit Bruce hasn’t broken her of yet. ‘Spoiler, Nightwing, Squire and the Question. And Proxy. The Birds are her team.’

He pushes himself up out of the chair, pushes his hands into his pockets. ‘What about grad school?’

‘It’s Paris, not Antarctica. Did you really think I’d let school slide?’

He hears her get up but he doesn’t look up until she touches his arm. ‘This is important to me, Terry.’ Her eyes search his. ‘I want to know I can work on my own. Not a Robin, remember?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I know.’ He almost doesn’t want to know. ‘What did Bruce say?’

‘What do you think?’

He laughs with her. Gotham could collapse tomorrow and Bruce would still be Bruce.

He says, ‘Guess I won’t have to worry anymore about you shooting me instead of the bad guy.’

She punches him in the arm. He rubs the spot. When Max punches you, you know it. ‘Maybe not,’ she says, ‘but now you’ve got Matt plus exploding batarangs.’

‘Thanks for the reminder,’ he says, and leaves, making sure to scuff her hair up first. She's gone long before the blue stains on his fingers are.

 

2 _You did those stupid bat ears in the lab and it was really good not to be alone. I’m not alone. I just… feel like I am sometimes._

His comm hums instead of clicking and there’s only one person who does that. He switches over and says, ‘Secure line?’

‘Duh,’ she says, and he wonders not for the first time what the cowl looks like when he grins. He’s thought about checking it out in a mirror but – too weird.

(He tries not to look in mirrored surfaces when he’s wearing the cowl. He doesn’t really want to know what he’d see looking back.)

‘Where are you?’ she asks, and he leans out, looking down into the dizzy swirl of light and motion that’s Gotham after dark.

‘District four public screen,’ he tells her. ‘Great view of the new Powers building. It’s all glass.’

‘Which one is it this time?’

‘Powers senior had a younger brother. The board voted him in after good old Pax was out of the picture.’ He shifts so he’s looking directly into Richard Powers’ well lit office. ‘He’s been working a lot of overtime since Powers Pharmaceutical released Clean Slate.’

‘The tests looked clean.’

‘The ones they made public. There were some weird side effects they didn’t publish.’

‘They never learn.’

‘Not guys named Powers,’ he agrees. ‘So what do you need?’

‘Maybe I just wanted to talk to you.’ He can hear the grin in her voice.

He waits.

She says, ‘You know, you’re a total dreg sometimes. What do you know about Shiva?’

‘Nothing. One of B’s?’

She hesitates. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. There’s no file in the database. Not even the sealed files.’

‘You aren’t supposed to know about those. I’m not supposed to know.’

‘What do you want to bet R’s read them all?’

‘I’m not betting against the house.’ Powers gets up, but he doesn’t do anything more interesting than use the executive bathroom. ‘Want me to talk to B?’

‘If I wanted that _I’d_ ask him.’ She blows her frustration out with her breath. ‘I’m not sure who I’m looking for. I don’t even know if it’s a woman or man.’ He can hear something coming over the line behind her voice, distorting it. ‘I think Nightwing knows,’ Max says, ‘but she’s not talking. She’s not much for conversation anyway, but she won’t even talk to Spoiler about this.’

‘What do you need?’ he says again.

‘I don’t know. A sounding board. Something. I don’t know.’

‘I can try,’ he says. ‘Later. Powers is moving.’ He just turned off the lights in his office.

Max says, ‘A lot later,’ and the line goes dead for a moment. Then there’s static and Bruce says, ‘Move, McGinnis.’

He says, ‘Moving now.’

 

redshirt03 _down the rabbit hole 02.37.55_  
ibrake4chiroptera _strikes a blow for the users_  
the_other_one _strikes a blow for the users_  
ibrake4chiroptera: yeah, so, that’s not my coding. when did that happen?  
the_other_one: Not sure. I think it started last week, but every time B tries to do something about it, it disappears. He gets bored, it shows up again.  
bigscaryfreak _strikes a blow for the users_  
bigscaryfreak: R, disable your program. Now.  
bigscaryfreak _gets the frak out_  
ibrake4chiroptera: …  
ibrake4chiroptera: since when did B change his handle?  
the_other_one: I don’t think he did.  
ibrake4chiroptera: R I TOLD YOU QUIT SCREWING AROUND WITH MY CODING  
redshirt03: ladies and germs, the queen bee of There’s Always A Backdoor has entered the building. don’t have a spizz fit, sheesh. since when are you all proprietary rights over a couple of tweaks?  
the_other_one: lmfao  
ibrake4chiroptera: *you* shut up.  
redshirt03: how can you be sure it’s me, anyway? maybe pointy ears grew a brain. finally.  
the_other_one: Watch it.  
ibreak4chiroptera: i know because one, B said so, two, no one else would bother and three, even if they did you’re the only one geek enough use cheesy retro sci-fi slang.  
ibrake4chiroptera: *redshirt*. please.  
ibrake4chiroptera: fyi you are never as funny as you think you are.  
redshirt03: cheesy retro sci-fi is where the schway is, just ask Crow.  
ibreak4chiroptera: why am i even talking to you weirdos? which one of my masochistic psychoses made me think i miss you guys? i have a city to clean up and i’m wasting time on *this*.  
the_other_one: I thought you wanted to know about Shiva.  
ibrake4chiroptera: R, at some as yet to be determined time and place, you’re dead. guess i should just comm B.  
redshirt03: that’d be an ix-nay on the omming-cay, least until he figures out what I did ahahaha.  
redshirt03: did I mention? mine is an evil laugh. later twips.  
redshirt03 _gets the frak out_  
ibrake4chiroptera: you’re closer, you kill him.  
the_other_one: He’s in Blüdhaven this weekend. DG has this thing about birds and trains. It’s creepy.  
ibrake4chiroptera: *censored*  
ibrake4chiroptera: you are all thwarting me. all of you, B included.  
the_other_one: He has sealed hardcopy. Same place he keeps the first R’s stuff. Want me to get it to you? Warhawk owes me one.  
ibrake4chiroptera: you’re my favorite. i’ll call you later. secure line.  
the_other_one: Yeah, yeah.  
the_other_one: Be careful.  
ibrake4chiroptera: you. have no room to talk.  
ibrake4chiroptera _gets the frak out_  
the_other_one: I know.  
the_other_one _gets the frak out_

 

The comm hums. He says, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’

‘I got them. Thanks.’ She sounds tired. And like she’s smiling.

‘No problem.’ He finishes cuffing the dreg on the ground and stands, ignoring the guy’s shouts.

‘Nice vocabulary,’ she says. ‘Does he know any words that don’t start with f?’

‘Not if he went through the Gotham school system.’

When she stops laughing, she says, ‘Spoiler agrees with you. She’s another native, did you know?’

‘Tell her I’m sorry.’ He leans down and gets a grip on vocabulary dreg. He elbows him in the gut as he lifts him and the shouting stops. Next to his ear, Max is speaking again.

‘Her dad was one of the last guys B put away before he retired. She and her mom moved away after that.’

‘And now she fights crime.’

‘In a purple hood. Wait, sorry, eggplant.’

He can hear sirens. He props vocabulary dreg up against the wall and walks to the edge of the terrace. ‘Did you get what you needed?’ he asks.

‘I think so,’ she says, and she doesn’t say anything else. He read the files; she doesn’t need to.

He says, ‘Be careful.’

She says, ‘We’re all hypocrites in this business.’

He says, ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ and lifts his arms. When the wings come in he steps off the edge.

 

1 _Most of the time I wish you hadn’t stopped me._

She doesn't come back until he's stopped expecting her to come.

‘Give me a reason,’ he tells Spellbinder. ‘Make it good.’

Spellbinder doesn’t say anything. He can’t. Batman’s hand is wrapped around his throat and he claws at his arm, thrashing.

‘If you want down that bad, I can let go.’

It’s a long way to the ground from the rooftops of Neo Gotham and Batman has him suspended, hanging from one hand over the empty drop. Spellbinder goes as still as a guy who’s choking can, then she says, ‘Put him down,’ and Batman almost does drop him.

He doesn’t look away; she’s in his peripheral vision, a white cross inside shadow.

‘Put him down,’ she says again.

Batman wonders what color Spellbinder’s skin is underneath his cowl. Red? Purple? The kids who died were blue-white, the veins in their eyes prominent and red.

‘I’m not going to say it again,’ she says, and he hears the slide of her wrist-shot as she cocks it. Spellbinder wheezes. He’s trying not to move, but survival is instinctive and his body wants to fight for it. Batman tightens his hand. He can’t hear his own breathing over Spellbinder’s choked off gasps. He can’t hear her but he can feel her like a breath on the back of his neck.

He moves almost before he knows he’s going to, yanking Spellbinder back in and dropping him. She’s there to catch him. She pulls his hood off and he vomits all over himself and the roof, dry-heaving and coughing, his face wet with tears and snot. It doesn’t stop her from zip stripping his wrists together.

Batman picks up the ball he knocked out of Spellbinder’s hand earlier and sits down on the edge of the roof, rolling the ball between his hands. It’s not activated but there’s something about the central eye that makes him want to stare. He turns it over so he can’t see it.

Huntress is talking, low-voiced, to someone over the comm. Robin, probably. It’s hard to hear her over the approaching sirens. When he looks up she’s looking back, still crouched beside Spellbinder, elbows resting on her knees. ‘Some welcome home,’ she says.

He holds up the ball. ‘Could’ve been worse.’

She says, ‘There's always next time.’

 

She follows him back to the cave on her bike. The comm is silent on the way and the cave is silent except for the bats. Robin is still out and Bruce has already gone up. There’s no one around to hear her chew him out, but she doesn’t. When he gets out of the car, she meets him halfway. Middle of the floor, right in front of the Case.

Empty eyes stare at him from empty suits. It should weird him out. It weirds him out that it doesn’t.

‘You could’ve told me you were coming,’ he says.

‘Sure, I could have. It wouldn’t have been as effective.’ She tips her head back, looking up at him. ‘How’s Bruce? He was upstairs when I got in.’

Terry pulls the cowl off, scrubbing his hair back out of his eyes. ‘He’s Bruce,’ he says, and she laughs. He’s missed that weird hitching gasp she makes.

She says, ‘Dana?’ and he doesn’t have a real answer. He fakes one.

‘She's okay. She’s running research and development at her dad’s company.’

He’s forgotten how to read her and she’s still wearing Huntress’s mask. He doesn’t know how to fit then into now, not with those kids with their blue lips and red-veined eyes staring at him in his head. He says, ‘Clean up?’ and she doesn’t answer immediately. She’s still looking at him. 

‘Just like old times,’ she says, finally, and walks around and past him toward the lockers.

Her locker is where it’s always been, across from his off to the left. He opens his up, pulling his street clothes out before he tosses the cowl in. ‘You still pissed?’

She says, ‘Shut up, McGinnis,’ and he glances at her over his shoulder.

Her mask is sitting on the bench, but he still can’t see her face. Her back is to him. She has the top half of her suit in her hands. The exercise bra she’s wearing doesn’t cover much and her skin looks smooth, poreless against the dark purple of her suit and the black bra. She has new scars.

They both do, but he knows her scars better than he does his own. He patched most of the damage they started life as back together. He knows her skin between them, the shapes they cut it into. He used to know it. There are new shapes now. New pieces he didn’t put together. New damage that doesn’t belong to either Gotham or him.

‘Are you going to stare all night?’ she says without turning.

He looks away, reaching for the catches on his suit. He peels the top half down, pushing it down to his waist, and he hears her pushing the rest of her own suit off. She says, ‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ and he waits until her footsteps go past him. He waits until he hears the water in the stall go on before he finishes undressing and walks into the shower proper.

The tile is slick, clammy under his bare feet. He turns the closest faucet and turns his face up into the spray. He lets the water sting his skin, lets it pour down over his face and he thinks _you did this to yourself_.

 

0 _It’s cool, McGinnis, I get it. Now shut up._

The cave is quiet when they pull back in, but he’s begun to expect that. Bruce and Ace tire easily and even with the elevator working again they spend maybe a quarter of the time they used to in the cave. And it’s way after midnight. The bells rang while they were fighting a bunch of Jokerz; they haven’t even had time to wish each other a hey-we’re-still-alive-how-about-that New Year, yet.

Matt says, ‘I knew I caught one back there. Happy freaking New Year to me.’ He’s fresh out of the shower and the crease in his right thigh is oozing fresh blood; he’s dragging himself toward the infirmary and Terry’s only got his boxers on. The traditional New Year’s noogies will have to wait.

‘Going over to Beetle’s after I patch this up,’ Matt yawns, ‘see you losers in the morning. Later in the morning. Evening. Whatever.’

‘’Night, twip,’ Max laughs softly after him. He flips his hand at her without turning, disappearing around the corner of the lockers on another enormous yawn, and Terry hears her pull her locker door open. ‘Well that’s one more night out for the books. Happy New Year, McGinnis.’

‘Same.’ He dumps his towel on the bench and digs a pair of jeans out from under the spare cowl he really needs to get around to repairing, and fabric slithers somewhere behind him, sliding up over her scar-perfect skin.

‘Not that either of us were complaining,’ she says, ‘but I thought you were spending this year in instead of out on the streets with me and Robin and the rest of the crazies.’

He’s known Bruce long enough to appreciate every nuance of tone that goes into making not-questions more demanding than point blank interrogation, and she’s a lot better at it than he is. She’s a lot better at a lot of things, and he’s… okay with that. He digs around some more until he finds it tangled up in his shirt; he sets the box down on the bench and finishes fastening his jeans before tugging the shirt on. It’s quiet enough to hear a bat drop from the ceiling; enough quiet to make even Batman nervous.

Until she blows silence away on a steep breath, blows out her own surprise. ‘Damn. Next time just tell me to shut up and mind my own business.’

‘Would you?’ he asks, curious.

‘Yeah, right.’ She moves, he hears her move, and his peripheral vision catches her movement when she sits down next to the box. She picks it up, turning it over in her hand… setting it back down without opening it. Even if she hadn’t been with him when he bought it, she’d still know what was in it. She can probably tell just by the weight.

He pulls his shirt the rest of the way down and picks up the box. He sits down in the place it was sitting and says, ‘I think I’m more relieved than anything else. How messed up is that?’

She’s grinning. ‘About as messed up as us sitting in here on the ass end of New Year’s Eve because we’d rather be out kicking people’s asses than partying.’

‘We’re a mess,’ he agrees. ‘It’s not a new thing. She got tired of it.’

She props her palms on the bench and leans back, looking up at the cave’s high dome. ‘It’s not just that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming you. Glass houses and stones.’ She’s a tired smile and rueful eyes, but he can’t see any regret. He doesn’t hear any when she says, ‘If I had anyone but a cat to go home to, I’d be in the same mess.’

Her head tips to the side and she meets his eyes, resting her cheek against her shoulder. Her hair is blue-purple tonight, and straightened, hanging down over her forehead. He almost reaches, pushes it back, but she’s still quiet exhaustion mixed with something else. He can’t pinpoint the emotion, so he keeps his hands to himself.

She says, ‘I think part of it is that you did tell her. Because after you told her, you didn’t keep telling her.’

He’s bat blind. Not-knowing anything, waiting for her to tell him. Max sighs.

‘You can’t just say, hey, I’m Batman, and then leave it there. Not if they love you. They’ll want, you know,’ she waves a hand, ‘periodic updates.’ She pauses. ‘Or else they’re Matt and they’ll stalk you until you let them play, but he’s your gene pool, so. Total freakshow.’

He elbows her in the side. ‘You did the same thing.’ She elbows him back and he leans away and says, awkwardly, ‘When it’s not the job, I’m not… good at that.’

‘No kidding,’ she says, and he thinks that everything about tonight is what’s wrong with his life. He thinks it’s also what’s right about it, and there’s a weird kind of comfort in knowing she knows it too – that they’re in this together.

Always have been. He tosses the box into his locker, then he turns back around and reaches.

‘What’re you doing, McGinnis?’ She sounds suspicious and looks askance, but he tightens his arm around her shoulders and pulls her sideways into a hug. He kisses her temple where she’s warm and soft and still a little damp from the shower before he lets her go.

‘Telling you. You’re my best friend. You’re my partner. I need you, so… stick around.’

She snorts. ‘Like I could go anywhere else. Don’t you get it? I’m as massive a freakshow as the rest of you weirdos. Go figure.’

‘Old news, Gibson.’

She leans into him, turning her grin in against his shoulder. ‘Hey, McGinnis.’

‘What?’

‘Ditto. On all of that.’

He hooks his arm around her neck and they’re quiet for a while. He can feel her shoulders rising and falling under his arm. Her breath skates across his throat.

‘So if I kissed you,’ he says, and she sits up, dislodging his arm and eyeing him sidelong. ‘You’d start the new year less a few body parts,’ she says.

‘That’s what I figured,’ he says, but she grins and says, ‘Try back again next month.’ She rolls her neck until he hears it crack. She rolls her shoulders back and then forward and when he looks back over at her, her hand is lying on the bench between them, palm up.

He’s careful about this. It's not something he can afford to screw up, ever. One at a time he fits his fingers in between hers, layers them neat and close like a suit over skin, callouses against matching callouses, and squeezes. Not hard. They’ve both got Bruce-hard grips, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t. Maybe because he wants to believe that they don’t have to do everything the hard way.

He says, ‘Maybe I will.’


End file.
